Lancashire Dialect and Accent - Description - Grammatical and Phonological Features

Grammatical and Phonological Features

• Definite article reduction. The is shortened to t or glottalled.
• Rhoticity is a key feature of a Lancashire accent. The closer that one gets to Manchester and Liverpool, rhoticity dies out. Northwards it seems to die out somewhere between Preston and Lancaster.
• In some words with RP /əʊ/, a sound more like may be used, for example, "hole" is pronounced "hoil".
• Some areas have the nurse–square merger: for example, Bolton, St. Helens, Widnes and Wigan. Traditionally, both nurse and square would be said with /ɜː/ but the Scouse-like /ɛː/ can also be heard.
• In areas that border Yorkshire, it is more likely for there, where, swear, etc. to be pronounced with /ɪə/, to rhyme with "here".
• Words that end -ight often are pronounced /iː/. For example light, night, right are pronounced /liːt/, /niːt/, /riːt/. Some areas pronounce fight and right with an /ei/ vowel — a split that is also found in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
• An oo in words such as book, look, hook can be pronounced with /uː/. This is a feature of Early Modern English, and is not unique to Lancashire dialect.
• The third person feminine (she) appears to be rendered as "'er" (her) but is in fact an Old English relic which dialect poets of the 19th century would render as Oo - the pronunciation is in fact a schwa (that is, the er in better = "er's a funny un" = she is a funny one/a little strange.
• In the past "open" would have become "oppen", "spoken" becomes "spokken", "broken" becomes "brokken", etc. but these are now uncommon amongst younger generations. They are still fairly common in West Yorkshire.
• Traditionally, a /t/ was replaced with an /r/; for example, "I'm gerring berrer", "a lorra laughs". Amongst the younger generation, it is much more common to replace /t/ with a glottal stop .
• Words such as cold and old are pronounced cowd and owd (e.g.: owd mon = old man)
• Rather than a mixed use of was and were such as occurs in Standard English, Lancashire dialects tend to use only one of the words and employ it in all cases. The west coast of Lancashire always uses was, the rest of the county always using were.
• Certain words ending in -ool drop the l. School therefore becomes skoo" and fool becomes foo. e.g.: th'art a foo - you are a fool.
• Use of a /z/ sound for an /s/ as in bus /bʊz/ for example in Darwen or even as far south as Oldham, Wigan and Leigh.
• The word self is reduced to sen or sel, depending on the part of Lancashire.
• Make and take normally become meck and teck. In older dialect, parts of north and east Lancashire used mack and tack.
• A marker of a traditional Lancashire accent is the frequent replacement of /a/ with /o/. For example, land became lond and man became mon. This is now considered to be old-fashioned.
• As noted above the second person familiar (tha) is used by older speakers to the extent that they will (correctly) inflect the verb. Th'art an owd mon = Thou art/you are an old man, th'as(t) gone owt = thou hast/you have gone out). Also amongst some older speakers a distinction is (or rather was) made between the familiar tha and yo/yer for other circumstances. Even rarer is the (again correct) use of the imperfect subjunctive ending for tha for example: if tha wert owd, tha'dst know = if thou wert/if you were old, thou wouldst/you would know.

For speakers of the Lancashire dialect the accent/dialect from even a neighbouring town is perceived as different as for example Cockney and a Somerset accent. Thus many of those who live in Bury pronounce the town name as Burri yet speakers in some of the neighbouring towns would say Berry. To assume, therefore, that all Lancastrians strongly roll the r (in fact none of them do; that's just a non-rhotic speaker's way of trying to describe rhoticity) as did Gracie Fields (her having a typical Rochdale accent) would be greeted with the same derision as might be visited on those North American actors who assume all English speakers are Cockneys. Older speakers of South Lancashire, for example, could place a person with a remarkable degree of accuracy, with the distinctive accents of Wigan, Bolton, Leigh, Chorley, Westhoughton and Atherton having their own sometimes subtle (but often not) differences in pronunciation.

Several dialect words are also used. Traditional Lancashire dialect often related to the traditional industries of the area, and these words became redundant when those industries disappeared. There are, however, words that relate to everyday life that are still in common use. Words that are popularly associated with Lancashire include "gradely" for excellent and "harping (on)" for talking in a mindless manner.

• The word "lunch", now in worldwide usage, actually originates from Lancashire.
• The term "moggy" a popular colloquial term for a cat in many parts of the country, means a mouse or insect in many parts of Lancashire, notably in the regions surrounding Wigan and Ormskirk. If older dialect speaking residents of these areas are asked what a 'moggy' is, they will say 'owt smo' an' wick ', i.e. anything small and quick. In the same districts, cheese is often referred to as 'moggy meyght' i.e. 'moggy meat', or in other words, food for mice. Many etymological authorities believe that cats were originally referred to as 'moggy catchers' and the term was abbreviated over time.
• The word 'maiden' for 'clothes horse' is now used even by people who consider themselves too "proper" to use dialect.